The Visible Spectrum
by Sakura414
Summary: Red blood, grey smoke, white walls, and green eyes. This was Kamui's world.


A/N:

So... it's been a solid three years since I've so much as clicked on this archive, and a solid two years since I went on an involuntary hiatus from writing altogether. I bring you this as an apology for my lack of activity.

I now proudly present to you exactly what one would expect from a painter and CLAMP fan: eyes and art vocabulary. Enjoy!

x

Grey.

You smoked a total of seven cigarettes between the time I had first requested your assistance with my school work and the day I just couldn't take it any longer. The smoke choked me, invading my lungs and replacing precious oxygen with a putrid, foreign, not-quite-air substance that my body rejected with every breath I attempted to take. It hung in the air between the two of us, hiding your face behind a thin mist of glorified dust that was stuck somewhere in limbo between a solid and a gas. The strings of smoke would dance around your head like a halo, whispering their intentions in my ear. They were going to kill you. I was going to lose you. You were going to die in the midst of saving the world because of a bad habit. The thought of this bothered me in too many different ways, and on the seventh day, I reasoned with you to put out your freshly lit cigarette. I never saw you touch one again, but you never stopped smelling like smoke.

Green.

Your eyes were the most mesmerizing shade of green I had ever seen. They were bright and vibrant, like new grass erupting from the earth, glistening with a layer of morning dew, as Mother Nature released the first few breaths of spring. They were large and innocent; the eyes of a newborn baby, attached to the face of someone who was as dead as a man with a beating heart could be. They were absolutely beautiful. I loved those eyes, and often found myself wishing that I could have known the Subaru who matched them. The young boy who knew nothing of cruelty and pain and deception and loss; the Subaru who had been killed long ago- perhaps by the Sakurazukamori, and perhaps in part by Subaru himself.

White.

They took you away on a stretcher. I waited outside of the operating room, head spinning, heart pounding, and eyes expelling all of the excess water my body contained. I was out here, you were in there, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to fix something so serious that was so obviously my fault. I was stupid for allowing this to happen. I was powerless to assist in saving you. I was selfish for so passionately hating myself while you were in so much more pain than I. With nothing to look at but the blankness of the walls, I waited for someone to come and tell me that I could see you. Pacing down the overly sterile hallways, concentrating on the slight sound my shoes made each time they made contact with the ivory tiles of the floor, studying the slight texture on the hideously bleach white wallpaper, anything to distract my racing brain and cease my body's relentless trembling. I sat there, surrounded by complete nothingness, and I wondered what it would be like if I, too, became nothing. If I melted into the blankness of the floor and erased my entire existence. I was certain that if I had such an ability, I would take advantage of it now. It was just as well, I thought- I hadn't been of any use in protecting my loved ones so far, and they dropped down at my feet like fallen leaves, crumpling to the ground and landing in a sickening sanguine puddle. The scene had played before my eyes numerous times, yet my presence never had any effect on the outcome.

It felt like years that I was trapped in the blank, empty purgatory of the hospital waiting room, contemplating my own eradication, before a nurse finally approached, face completely dead as she delivered the news. You were okay, but your right eye couldn't be saved. One of the breathtakingly beautiful eyes that I so loved was gone. You had tried to save me, and in doing so, an entire half of your world had gone dark. I had never hated myself so much.

Red.

In my dreams, I saw red. The way things looked could be likened to the maroon tint that seemed to paint the interior of one's home after an afternoon of playing in the snow. Except the rosy film covering my mind's eye wasn't a soft pinkish hue caused by the light, but a deep, harsh vermillion caused by something much more tangible.

Blood.

Blood was everywhere. Everything in my dreamscape was completely drenched in it. The world inside my head was permanently dyed crimson, and there was no way for me to escape from the horrifying truths that I was forced to repeatedly watch through my mind's eye. Kotori. Aunt Saya. Aunt Tokiko. Mother. Me. You.

You...

You were there when the world returned to its usual dull hues. I opened my eyes to find you smiling down at me, relief washing over your stunning features and your grip on my bandaged hand relaxing as your brain registered that I was awakening. For the first time, I found solace in the dull white and grey tones of the room. There was no red here; no blood, no fire, no death or harm coming to those whose lives I cherished most. Just plain, calm non-colors. My eyes wandered to yours, and I found myself basking in the cool, calming green. The opposite of red. I drenched myself in that color, taking it in and accepting it as my salvation from a world of monochrome. No matter how many times my mind fed me images of scarlet, I was always safe clean across the color wheel, where your eye fell on the visible spectrum.

Complementary Colors

I could almost feel the pain in your heart when I stepped through the threshold of your apartment. It was completely dark, save for the light filtering through a dusty window draped with a shabby looking curtain. A few beams of sunlight streamed down and illuminated your face, if only slightly, to reveal the utter deadness imbedded in every one of your features. Your emotions had been sucked out of you- you were walking, talking, and breathing, but in all other senses of the word, dead. Even in the one place where life had once remained, there was nothing. It was strange; I distinctly remembered a shade of forest green, mixed with a light chartreuse and flecked with hints of gold. That beautiful color shone brightly even when there was no other light to be found. It was dynamic; like a painting with a perfect composition.

Yet when I looked into your eye now, all I saw was a flat, dull green. I could no longer see the forest and the sea and the shining sun all at the same time. There was no panorama of everything beautiful in the world, encapsulated in a single sphere of total perfection. It was just... green. Plain and simple and boring and dead. And in that moment, devoid of the blissful distraction- the beauty brought upon those eyes by the sheer will to live- I saw everything terrible. There was blood and fire and death, all painted in a million shades of red. The green was no longer an escape, but a backdrop for the vermillion massacre in its foreground.

In the end, the color that would always make red stand out the most was green.

x

A/N:

I was initially going to stop after "Red", but the complementary color thing just had way too much potential. Sorry if I broke anyone's feels. ^.^

(Also, the final segment has absolutely no effect on the fact that "Be my complimentary color" is my favorite art pickup line.)


End file.
